


Brightly Forward

by misbegotten



Category: Marvel (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-27
Updated: 2010-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:58:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misbegotten/pseuds/misbegotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What do you want out of life?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brightly Forward

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the first X-Men movie.

Cyclops has a scar on his neck. Scars, three staccato lines punctuating the trimmed edge of his hair and traveling up past his ear.

Jean has cut down her fingernails to thin ellipses of white.

Rogue presses her nails against the felt tips of her gloves. The seams muffle her.

"What does it feel like?" she blurts out, when the lines have melted into whispers. Cyclops, studying a technical manual for the Blackbird, raises his head. Crimson from her cheek bleeds across the oaken tabletop and is absorbed into the shining lenses of his glasses. She rubs a sheathed finger along her neck, mirroring the tracks, and flushes brighter when she realizes it.

He smiles slightly -- does Jean feel him remembering? -- but pretends not to know what she means.

"What does it feel like?" she asks again, feigning adult nonchalance. She can't remember the sting of scraped knees or careless burns, has forgotten that her mother pressed Band-Aids against her skin once upon a time. Rogue feels stuffed with wool and faded by disuse. She's a discarded teddy bear or pale Raggedy-Ann.

He can play adult too. His lips, the only mirrors into his soul, settle into teacher mode. She wants to pluck out her threads, one by one, in frustration.

"I'll show you," he says, surprising her. He reaches across the table, places a hand just where her glove ends. She can almost feel the heat from his palm on her forearm.

***

They've been riding forever. Rogue loosens her grip slightly, and he moves his hand from the brake to check her. He's done that every time.

He's so thin, she thinks, and weaves her fingers into the fabric of his shirt. Cyclops is wearing gloves too; she focuses on the black leather as he presses the accelerator.

The upgrades to the Blackbird need to be tested, he explained to her as he loaded the bike. And motorcycles need to fly? she asked. He just smiled.

She wonders what it would feel like to ride with the wind in her hair. Logan doesn't wear a helmet, she guesses.

"Almost there," Scott says in her ear, crackling over the headset. Cyclops, someone corrects in her head.

Logan isn't here. Logan doesn't need seat belts, or helmets, or safety nets.

Rogue presses her arms tighter against Scott's waist in response. They bend together into the turn, and he brings the bike to a smooth stop just as the road gives way to sand. Taking off the helmet, she's shocked when crisp air bites her nose. She teeters off the seat. He holds out a steadying hand, but she leans lightly against the bike instead. She can still feel the road humming in her jaw.

The sun is shadowed, flickering counterfeit silhouettes onto the empty beach. How far did they fly? How far did they ride? She can't remember any road signs. Everything was red through the helmet's visor, contrasts impossible. Can Scott see the old woman streak of white in her hair?

He takes the helmet from her, rests it on the seat. His boots don't sink in the sand as he strides forward, not checking to see if she is following. Leader boots, she thinks. If he keeps walking, will he cross the water? Or will the weight of being human, non-human, sink him? She considers staying against the bike's warm body, maybe even climbing back onto the seat and wrapping herself around the handles.

Maybe not. She stumbles after him.

Scott has scooped up a handful of sand, and lets it trickle away as he leads her to the water. They sit just where the waves lean forward to tone the grains into an earthy brown.

"Marie, what do you want out of life?"

Scars, she thinks. "To be happy." C+ answer, unoriginal. Revise, rewrite the essay.

He's lost his sand. He brushes his hand down her arm. The dark leather is already sun warmed; his fingers must be on fire beneath it. He peels back her gloves, unwrapping her. Leather and sand, a gritty sleek touch. Uncomfortable and sensuous at the same time.

"It feels like that," he instructs her. Scott brushes his hand against the earth, then across her arm. The last of the golden grains he brought with him slip across her and, fleeting, disappear. Only the dulled, damp clumps of the ocean's sand remain, leeching to her. "It feels like this."

A speck of something stings her eye, and she blinks it away. She wonders what it would feel like to be buried in the soft earth at the head of the beach. Warm and suffocating, no doubt. She plunges her fingers into the chilled dirt beneath her.

"It feels like this." He kicks forward, splashing them both with the spray of the oncoming wave. Rogue shudders at the water raising bumps on her flesh. Then, catching sight of the drops beaded on his glasses, dripping from his overlong bangs, she giggles. Lightly at first, then harder as he laughs with her.

"Happy?"

She scoots forward, dipping her shoes in the next wave, and the one that follows. "For now."

He's already moving away. Maybe he's still sitting next to her. She can barely hear him say, "That's the way it works."

Rogue kicks her shoes off and tosses them behind her, peels off her socks. The ocean is freezing, even though the sun has come out again. Poor sun, trying to warm what it can't touch.

"Scott, what do you want from life?"

"I want the people I care for to be safe."

She tries it on. It doesn't fit comfortably. "Not happy?"

He shrugs, and for an instant she thinks that he might tilt the ruby lenses down, and regard her over the dark rims of his glasses. "I can't fix everything."

His boots are getting wet. Her toes are cold. "Do we have to go back now?"

"Not yet, if you don't want to." He rises, brushing sand off of his pants. "I think I'll build a castle."

She almost giggles again. She pictures the school rendered in sand, its secret doors and panels dribbling away into golden piles. "With a moat?"

"Definitely," he calls back, and drops down onto the perfect canvas. He's still wearing his gloves. She considers her own, coiled beside her, then leaves them near the waves.

"A drawbridge might be good too," he suggests.

She squints into the sun, wonders if it will bake the smile into sharp lines on her face.

A drawbridge. She can handle that.


End file.
